D7 Accessibility Taskforce Meeting Summary (August 24, 2009)

Present on the call

• Mike Gifford
• Everett Zufelt
• Brandon Bowersox
• Valeria Brigatti
• Rob Russell
• Jeff Burns

One week to Code Freeze

On the call we discussed the fact that there is only one week remaining until code freeze. Because of this certain issues need to be prioritized. Some of the current issues in the queue will be able to be fixed after code freeze, others unfortunately will not be fixed for the Drupal 7 release.

Autocomplete

The accessibility of autocomplete for screen-reader users was siscussed. Because this component is functional, screen-reader users can type into the field, but don't have access to the list of suggestions, it is understood that this issue needs to take a lower priority.

Table Drag

Reordering rows of a table with tabledrag is not accessible to screen-reader users unless they disable Javascript in their browser to use the weighted reorder interface. This is a high priority issue, but is one of only two accessibility issues marked as "critical" and should be able to be worked on after code freeze, as all critical bugs need to be fixed before a major point release of Drupal.

Form Labeling

Form labeling in Drupal is currently inconsistent, inflexible and is prone to create problems for assistive technology users. There are currently a nuber of open form labeling issues in the queue that we desire to have fixed for code freeze.

Some ideas discussed on the call were:

• Create a #show_title property for form elements providing developers the flexibility to have the form element title shown as a label before, or after, the form element, or to have the title of the element set as the title attribute for the element.
• Using theme_fieldset, instead of theme_form_element, as the theme wrapper for the date, radios and checkboxes element types.

Form Validity

Currenty invalid form fields are represented only by having a class set on the elements label. The standard implementation is to style the invalid form label red. This method does not communicate information to screen-reader users that the field is invalid.

The #error property of each form element is set to true if the field is invalid. We discussed that it would be nice to hook into this property on the theming level to provide some form of information for screen-reader users that a field is invalid.

Fieldsets (expand and collapse state)

Currently it is not possible for a screen-reader user to identify the role of the link used to expand and collapse fieldsets. Visually there is an icon styled as a background image on the anchor that performs the expand and collapse action. It was seen as a priority to find a solution to this problem.

It was discussed that it would likely be easier to get a patch approved if we can find a way to leave the icon as a background CSS image, but that it may be more currect for an informational element like an icon to be represented by an actual img element.

Selected / active tabs for Local tasks

On many pages of the Drupal UI there are lists of local tasks that are styled as a tabstrip. These tasks are represeted as an unordered list of links, one of which is active. There is currently no information communicated to screen-reader users regarding which of these links (or tabs) are selected. It is seen as a priority to get this issue resolved for code freeze.

One example of where this can become confusing is if looking at any function on http://api.drupal.org/ where the local tasks (tabs) are used to represent different versions of Drupal in which the function can be found. Screen-reader users currently do not have easy access to know which tab is selected / which version of Drupal the source code of the function is from.

Next Meeting

We did not schedule another meeting as code freeze is on September 1. However, it might be nice to have a meeting sometime in September to review what has been completed, what can still be completed (minor changes) and to discuss the state of accessibility documentation on Drupal.org.